340 THE ATTACK ON LORD JOHN RUSSELL. chap, the conquests wrested from him one after the XII. ! — other by Todleben's counter-approaches. It is true the great April Bombardment was day by day going on ; but, there being, as we have seen, no resolve to follow it up by assault, the bark portended no bite. There was not at the time any prospect that (except by the coming of Louis Napoleon to the Crimea) General Canrobert would be superseded in the command of the French army. The French Emperor and the English Govern- ment agreed in believing that Sebastopol would never be taken by means of the siege then on foot against the South Side of the place.* They hoped indeed that its ulterior fall might be com- passed by successful operations in the field ; but even over that prospect (which was only, after all, one dependent on the issue of a future cam- paign) there hung a dim, lowering cloud ; for the command of the French army, and with it a dominant voice in the ordering of the intended campaign was, as then understood, to be ex- ercised by Louis Napoleon personally ; and this with a plan in his head which our War Minister pronounced to be ' wild ' and ' visionary.' t What brightened this part of the prospect was only the gleam of a hope that plans which seemed absurd in design might perhaps be transformed into measures of wholesome strategy when encounter- ing the test of real war. The Allies, we know, were so circumstanced that, whilst thus unable
- See ante, chap. ix. t See ante, ibid.
